Thrifty Gambler

A while ago, I was pretty hard-up: Web hosting fees were due, bills – I’ll save you the sob story!
Coming to the point, I investigated boosting traffic and marketing with Facebook advertising, looking to encourage a target audience to visit, or promote products for comission.  How did I fare?

Not well..Here is part 1 of why not:
Facebook has some “interesting” policies in regards to advertising.  One of these covers extremely irritating delays, while adverts are screened.  Before anyone points out the pitfalls of unfettered access to advertising media, I  understand why this needs to happen to some degree- I don’t particularly want my (admittedly most used) social networking portal to be covered in adverts for viagra, get-rich-quick schemes and some kind of “manual male enhancement device”. I do, however, want my advert to be reviewed in good time, not delayed for several days and then falling foul of their “ban” on gambling promotion.  I say “ban”, as I pressed the Facebook employee as to why my adverts for a review site were not approved, yet there are a plethora of adverts for casinos and poker sites… After some email back-and-forth, I was rewarded with an interesting revelation:  The “ban” is not a blanket ban – it is a selective ban.

You see, it transpires that you *can* advertise gambling on Facebook, but only by entering into a formal agreement in which you are obliged to spend a minimum of US$30,000 per annum.

I know that sites have a duty to their visitors, but I feel somewhat annoyed when the moral grandstanding is a facade for protecting lucrative advertising revenue.

I notice that the terms describing the prohibited nature of gambling promotion have since changed to include the all-important phrase “without authorisation from Facebook”. A nice retrospective bit of arse-covering.